Hey, a new survey!

Jill from Librarian Hire Fashion and I have put together a new survey seeking the opinions of hiring managers on what candidates should wear.

We started putting the word out on Tuesday, September 4th, and so many people have responded! As of Sunday, September 9th, 154 people had taken the survey! That’s more than the 146 responses I’ve gotten for the original survey, which has been up for about six months. So far an overwhelming majority of them have been Academic, probably because the request for participation on the collib-l listserv went up on Tuesday, and the publib post didn’t go up until Friday.

So, if you know people who hire for archives, school libraries, special libraries, and public libraries, please invite them to take the survey! (Please do share with people who hire Academic librarians too of course, we’re just more in need of those other groups.)

Thank you in advance for spreading the word, and thank you, thank you, thank you, to the people who have already responded.

First, a Word about the Survey

This survey is much heavier on the closed-ended questions. Hopefully, this Stats and Graphs post will introduce you to the survey, and as I post individual responses later on the context of their answers will be clearer. You can of course click in and look through this survey, or the original, without having to respond, at the links on the Participate page.

I hope that the answers will help as you stand in front of your closet trying to decide on the outfit you will wear to the occasion that may just TOTALLY CHANGE YOUR LIFE! However, I’d like to reiterate that this project isn’t precisely scientific, and you should feel free to disregard any of the results you disagree with. As one respondent pointed out:

You should have someone vet this survey. The response are poorly articulated and are biased by the overly casual and poor attempts at humor. Survey response should not be jokey. I feel like you were wearing flip flops when you wrote it.

Incidentally, we did actually have friends and library contacts vet the survey, but didn’t always take their advice. My sister, who blogs about gender and workplace bias in her blog Bay Area Actor, pointed out that the questions are more focused on women, but this was not corrected. Partly because there are more women librarians, and partly because the survey was pretty long already without adding in questions about neckties.

I’m sorry, manbrarians. A lot of the survey is still relevant to you, just not all of it.

RESULTS!

Anyway, enough rambling. On to the stats and graphs!

Just to reiterate that the majority of respondents are academic librarians, who may or may not have more formal standards of dress, I’m going to share the demographics of respondents first.

Also to mention, I’m using Google forms, and the charts it generates cut off some of the answer choices. However, it takes a while to do a post like this, and even longer to make it prettier in Excel, so I’ll ask you to please just excuse how sloppy it looks. This is a labor of love, and I’m a busy lady.

Demographics

What type of institution do you hire for?

Academic Library

105

68%

Public Library

42

27%

School Library

0

0%

Special Library

3

2%

Archives

0

0%

Other

4

3%

Where are you?

Northeastern US

41

27%

Midwestern US

35

23%

Southern US

42

27%

Western US

21

14%

Canada

5

3%

UK

5

3%

Australia/New Zealand

1

1%

Other

4

3%

Where are you?

Urban area

42

27%

Suburban area

38

25%

City/town

53

34%

Rural area

19

12%

Other

2

1%

How many staff members are at your library?

0-10

35

23%

10-50

80

52%

50-100

17

11%

100-200

11

7%

200+

10

6%

Are you a librarian?

Yes

145

94%

No

4

3%

It’s complicated

5

3%

Are you now or have you ever been:

a hiring manager(hiring people that you will directly or indirectly supervise)

6 responses to “Stats and Graphs: What Should Candidates Wear?”

Glad makeup isn’t a dealbreaker. My feeling is that an interview is about finding out if you’re a right fit. I am interviewing them as much as they are interviewing me. Knowing that I will never where makeup to work after hiring (just not my style and makes my face itch), I’m disinclined to wear it to the interview.

Unless, of course, I am desperate for any job and willing to put on any persona to land one.

I wonder if the people reading this survey could post questions they have about interview clothing and maybe get input from other readers? I bet we even have a hiring manager or two reading that might offer advice.

I agree that we need to hear from more men, but you know, men need to speak up when they have questions, too. I try to find information and pictures for men to post on my blog, but it’s hard to find.

Maybe men have the answers to these questions, but what I wonder if they wonder is:

How does a man decide between wearing khakis and button-up vs. a suit, especially in the humid summer?
How does a man decide whether or not to wear a tie?
Is a suit without a tie more appropriate than slacks, button-up, and tie, but no blazer? Are there stigmas attached to each look?
Do men have to debate whether to wear slip-ons or lace-ups? What about shoes vs. boots?

I know so many people who get sneezing fits when around perfume and most of the perfume I smell on others stinks to me, that I rarely wear scents.

When I do wear perfume, I keep in mind what I once read. That is, only those who are privileged enough to come into my close personal space should be rewarded with a gentle scent; if the person talking to me in normal interactions can smell my perfume, then it is too strong and never should one be able to smell it as I walk by.

That’s how I handle things, but I’m sure there are less conservative, but still socially acceptable, options.

Do not wear perfume: Some people are quite allergic to perfume smells. My partner (not a librarian, but an engineer-manager) was in a meeting with someone from outside his firm. She wore perfume.

Such people get fast reactions: headache, affected sinuses. They cannot walnunter or to be in such a dept. Some employers have a no-perfume policy because of the open office work areas. I did work for such an employer.

Do I wear perfume: I’m clean. Yes, I loved scented lotions but have to wear it when he’s not around/ or at beginning of day when I go …outdoors. 🙂